


Splinters

by thegraytigress



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 04:53:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,835
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4087666
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve has splinters in his hands. They don't hurt much. Not so much that he can't ignore them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Splinters

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ and _Avengers: Age of Ultron_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** T (for language)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is a little gap-filler for _Age of Ultron_. It takes place after the team goes to Clint's farm but before they have their little meeting with Fury. As requested, this one explores Steve's (not at all happy) feelings about Bruce/Natasha. And when I mean not happy, I mean not happy. I seriously pulled this one out of a huge pile of Steve-angst. It's been so long since I've written something like this between Steve and Nat, and we'll be back to them being crazy in love with each other after this. Still, be prepared: this is not a fix-it. It's just not quite one-sided, not–entirely-but-mostly unrequited Romanogers. Poor baby. Someone give that boy a hug and a kiss, for crying out loud.

Steve had splinters in his hands.

The serum was working hard on getting them out, of course.  Breaking them down or pushing them back through the skin.  It was a testament to how angry he’d been when he ripped that log in half.  His skin was pretty thick, so it took a lot for anything to pierce it.  But he had splinters in his palms, splinters in his fingers, needle-thin shards of wood that were stinging just enough that he noticed it.  It wasn’t much.  Not enough to really bother him.  Not enough to really hurt.

He stood on the front porch of Barton’s farmhouse, staring out at the last vestiges of a beautiful sunset over the hills before him.  The summer evening was cool, quiet.  The sky was silver and cerulean that was quickly darkening into navy and midnight blues.  Crickets were singing.  A gentle breeze picked its way through the trees, sending their canopies rustling, before it brushed through his hair.  Despite how warm the day had been, it was a cold wind, and he had to stop himself from shivering.  In the bushes and trees beyond, the quinjet was idle and hidden.  He could just barely see it as the shadows descended deeper and thicker.  He kept glancing at it almost involuntarily just to make sure it was still there.  He didn’t know why.  No one would find it, or them.  Nothing could touch them or injure them here.  This place was safe, secret, far removed from everything.  Far removed from the chaotic, dangerous world filled with HYDRA’s seemingly unending evil and maniacal, homicidal robots and enhanced orphans who could run circles around them and twist their realities.  That was why they’d come, why Clint had brought him to his house.  Nobody expected one of the Avengers to have something like this.  And why would they?  _This_ was everything the Avengers weren’t.  Stability.  Security.  Safety.  _Home._

_“We can go home.  Can you imagine it?”_

He closed his eyes and looked away from the jet, balling his right hand into a fist.  His skin stretched and pulled around the splinters.  There were a lot of them, little lines of wood laced into his flesh and poking their way inside him.  He exhaled slowly, forcing himself to relax.  When he did that, he suddenly felt so tired.  So absolutely worn down and whittled away.  Exhausted.  He needed to rest, but he didn’t want to stay here.  He knew as a leader that his team _all_ needed rest – _my team.  Are they really my team?_ – so here they would remain.  But his skin was tingling around those splinters, crawling with disquiet and discomfort.  It wasn’t just the fact that he hated waiting uselessly for Ultron to make his next move, that being unprepared for the coming attack didn’t sit well with him.  Granted, that was certainly a large chunk of his unease.  Everyone deserved a breather after what had happened in Africa, Romanoff and Banner most of all, but he didn’t have the patience for this right now.  Not when they had no idea what Ultron was building with the things he’d stolen.  They had to figure out Ultron’s endgame and they had to do it fast before their enemy secured an even better upper-hand.  Whatever Ultron was up to, it wasn’t good.  It could spell destruction for not just the Avengers, but for the whole world.  They needed to make this right, and they couldn’t accomplish that here.

So there was that.  In addition, though, a part of him felt incredibly guilty for dragging all this mess into Laura Barton’s world.  She was really a nice lady, accepting and even appreciative of what Clint did, of who the Avengers were.  She was generous in what she was providing for her husband’s team.  She’d welcomed them without a second thought, despite what they’d done, what they would do, and what they brought with them.  She’d offered up food and clothes and first aid, a place to rest and a chance to think.  Clint had obviously gone to great lengths to keep his farm a secret, and maybe it had been his choice to expose the truth about his life, but it couldn’t have been made lightly or easily.  The Avengers had been fighting together for almost a year now, and _none_ of them had had the slightest idea that their archer had had this side to him.  At least this explained where Barton went on his downtime.  Steve couldn’t really fathom that, leaving his home behind for days at a time to go and fight the world’s worst evil, and then coming back to life as it normally was, with homework and housework and being a father and husband.  He couldn’t fathom that at all, and that was what he’d thought he’d wanted.

_“Imagine it, Steve.  The war’s over.  I’m ready for our dance.”_

Therein was the truth of it, if he’d let himself see it.  Everything he’d wanted…  _An empty dance hall._

The unnerving sense of wanting to _move_ clenched his gut.  His skin _itched_ around the splinters, and he had to stop himself from picking and tugging at them.  Normally he counted himself as a pretty patient person, and while he knew he could be impulsive, he could keep a calm head in a crisis better than anyone.  That was why he was who he was, why he led the team.  Staying here, though, surrounded by Clint’s family, his cute kids and his sweet, pregnant wife, by his house filled with toys and well-used furniture and half-finished home projects and the kids’ drawings and assignments proudly hanging on the refrigerator…  Peace and quiet and _happiness_ …  He didn’t belong here.  It was almost physically painful to stay, to be trapped here in this nice house.  He wanted to leave.

“You okay?”

He turned at the soft call behind him and saw Natasha standing in the doorway.  Her hip was against the frame, her arms crossed over her chest.  She was dressed in black pants, a blue shirt, and a black sweatshirt.  The golden light from the kitchen behind her bathed her beautifully, set her hair ablaze in a show of glossy red, and her lips quirked into something that might have been a smile.  Steve caught himself staring and made himself look away.  “Yeah.”

She lingered in the doorway.  He could feel every move she made, no matter how small and inconsequential, as she finally stepped across the porch to him.  Natasha could move without making a sound; he’d seen it plenty of times in the past.  She was an expert at being a shadow.  But she wasn’t trying now, and the wooden planks of the porch creaked loudly and ominously under her feet.  She came to stand beside him where he leaned against the railing.  This awkward, awful quiet came between them before she said something more.  “You don’t look okay, Cap.”

He didn’t want her there.  He wasn’t in the mood for talking, but it wasn’t just that.  He didn’t want _her_ there.  He didn’t want to deal with this now, on top of everything else.  It had been bothering him for weeks.  He didn’t know what there was between them.  During the whole fiasco with SHIELD collapsing, he’d thought he’d come to see a side of her that she never showed.  Vulnerability.  Her world had been falling apart all around her as SHIELD had been revealed to be HYDRA.  The foundation of her existence had been shaken.  The lies she’d told.  The things she’d done.  But he liked to think when she’d confessed all of this to him at Sam’s house that it hadn’t just been her vulnerability.  It had been something more, a timid moment of trust between them.  Something pure, a true connection in this future, this future he still didn’t entirely understand or consider his home.  He had so little of that.  A real, meaningful bond with someone about whom he cared.  A relationship that didn’t involve Captain America.  He’d thought at the time that that was what she’d been to him.  A friend.  Maybe something more.

He’d been wrong before, though.  Plenty of times.  This time included, in all likelihood.  They’d shared a hell of a harsh experience.  SHIELD had crumbled.  Bucky had come back, tortured and twisted and turned into his enemy.  Steve had almost died saving the world.  He didn’t remember a whole lot of what had happened when Fury and the others had rescued him from the riverbank after the fight over the Potomac, but he very clearly recalled Natasha, her steady hands pressed over his injuries as she desperately tried to stop the bleeding and her eyes wide with fear and her voice begging him to hold on.  _“Hold on, Steve.  You’re going to be okay.  You hear me?  You’re going to be okay.”_

“Steve?”

He shook his head, jostling himself clear of those memories.  He didn’t want to deal with this.  Not now.  _Stick to work._ Sticking to work was safe.  A safe topic.  “Just don’t like hanging around, waiting for Ultron to get the jump on us.”

She tipped her head, folding her arms on the railing and looking out into the yard.  “Seems to be the way this one is going,” she commented darkly.  “I suppose it makes sense.  It’s like trying to outwit Stark, only with even less logic and considerably more collateral damage.”

He grunted a dismal chuckle.  “You think he’s happy about that?  Spending the night in the same room with him isn’t going to be pleasant.”

She smiled and nodded.  “Well, maybe Fury has something to offer.”

Fury.  Right.  Showing up just when they needed him yet again.  The others were gathering in Clint’s kitchen to talk with the ex-SHIELD Director, everyone tentatively hopeful that he had something good to say.  Some hope.  Laura was making iced tea and Clint’s daughter was helping her dad with some rice krispie treats.  Fury stood out like a sore thumb, standing to the side and watching Barton’s family like even he couldn’t make sense of it though he’d known of it all along.  They all were out of place.  It was downright odd, seeing Stark and Banner standing around the kitchen table that was cluttered with the kids’ toys and artwork and papers.  Tony’s face was still pinched with regret, with the pain and shame that he wouldn’t admit he was feeling.  Banner looked…  Steve didn’t know.  He was having a hard time being objective about Banner.  That soured his mood more, so he looked back out into the night.  “Maybe.”

Natasha turned away from the sight as well, settling her gaze on him.  She was trying to be teasing.  A ghost of the woman she’d been back in DC was leaning closer to him, torturing him without even knowing it.  “Something tells me this team of ours is going to need Captain America.”

He didn’t want to hear that, and he was about to tell her so ( _to hell with pretending all the time_ ), but he couldn’t make the words come.  He did chance another look at her, though.  She seemed… calm.  Not peaceful exactly, but alright.  There was color in her cheeks and vigor in her eyes.  It was a far cry from how withdrawn and battered and devastated she’d been earlier that day after Wanda Maximoff had torn into their minds.  A taste that was unpleasantly bitter tightened in the back of Steve’s throat, thickening and strengthening until that was all he could taste.  Bitterness.  She was freshly showered, freshly dressed.  Put together.  Restored, maybe.  And she was sharing a room with Banner.  Banner had been the one to put her back together.

He didn’t like to think about why that bothered him so much.

The silence that crept between them was anything but comfortable.  She was impassive, but he liked to think he saw beyond that.  Then he realized he was a goddamn fool.  Why would he be able to understand her?  Natasha was a master at controlling her emotions, at playing people.  Why in the world would he ever think she hadn’t simply played him back in DC?  And even if she hadn’t been toying with him, with all her coy smiles and tender touches and flirting glances…  With that kiss…  Even if she’d been honest, he’d _told_ her he wanted her as a friend.  What the hell had he expected?  Not to be this unhappy about seeing her with someone else.  Not to be this envious.  _Not Banner._ The worst part was that he wasn’t even sure he and Natasha were friends anymore if they ever had been.  His hands hurt as he curled them around the railing tighter than he should have.  It worked the splinters back into his skin.

Finally she sighed.  Obviously she’d been expecting something from him, and when he hadn’t been willing to give it, she decided to take matters into her own hands.  “You want to talk about it?”

She wasn’t specific, but he knew what she was asking.  And he couldn’t help that the bitterness exploded out of him.  A harsh laugh, a dismissive thing.  She didn’t take offense.  He thought she should have.  Instead she pressed closer still until her hip was against his, like there was _anything_ between them other than the meaningless flirting he’d tried to convince himself was something more than just flirting.  Her voice dropped down softer, like she was trying to seem nonthreatening.  “What did she show–”

“Don’t,” he warned.

Now she was rebuffed.  And hurt.  “What?”

“It doesn’t work that way.  I asked you if you were okay, if _you_ wanted to talk about it.  I asked two or three times on our way here, and you completely ignored me.  You shut me out.”

She winced and shook her head, anger in her eyes that simultaneously shamed him and made him feel vindicated.  But she didn’t act on how that ire.  Instead she looked away like she was the one who was ashamed, and that gnawed at his composure like the splinters biting into his skin.  She stared out into the falling shadows like she wanted to climb into them, the same desperate desire to _run_ that he’d felt before abruptly bright in her eyes.  “I couldn’t tell you,” she finally admitted.

This was even worse.  “But you could tell him.”

Immediately he wanted to take the words back.  He’d never been so obvious about how he felt before.  _Jealous._   It was pathetic and petty.  Natasha wasn’t his.  She had never asked to be.  She never had been.  In truth, despite the harrowing ordeal they’d shared when they’d been hunted by SHIELD and the Winter Soldier, she wasn’t anything more than his friend, and not even a friend he understood very well.  They’d gone their separate ways, him to look for Bucky (unsuccessfully) and her to build a new identity since Black Widow lay exposed and in shambles.  They’d reunited months later, both changed but not enough to forget whatever this thing was between them.  It was amorphous and ill-defined and troublesome.  Their working relationship had suffered for it.  And he wasn’t even sure if she knew there _was_ something between them at all or if he’d imagined it all (or subconsciously fabricated it just to have _something_ to plug the holes in his heart).  When they’d met again, all of the easy camaraderie and sweet flirting and tentative friendship that had been between them for months before SHIELD had fallen apart had completely vanished.  He didn’t know why.  She’d come back as someone else.  So had he, hardened and not quite the optimist he had been (or the one he’d been trying to be).  He never called that nurse.  She hadn’t asked about it.

He couldn’t read her.  He never could.  He wanted to now.  He _needed_ to now.  He’d never felt more alone than he did at this moment, surrounded by his team and Barton’s nice family and nice home, and he needed to know if it was too late.  “Does he make you happy?”

Natasha seemed surprised.  After all, it was a very forward question and probably a completely inappropriate thing for him to be asking.  But he’d asked, and she realized he wanted an answer.  So she hesitated.  In the quiet that followed, the crickets chirped and the leaves whispered in the oddly chilly wind and he could see her struggling.  She was likely trying to decide between a truth and a lie.  “He’s safe.”  Maybe it wasn’t a struggle between a truth and a lie.  Maybe it was a struggle within herself to understand what she was doing.  What she wanted.  Why she wanted it.  She went on, and he could see more of her battle.  It was epic, cracks in her eyes that maybe went down to her heart.  She shrugged, that little, half-hearted, sad shift of her shoulders that he knew from Sam’s spare bedroom in DC.  It was nothing more than a weak attempt to dismiss something that was impossible to dismiss.  “He’s comfortable.  He and I…  We’re the same.  We…  We can’t have this.  We don’t belong in this world.  We don’t have a place in it.  We don’t belong here.”

_“The war’s over, Steve.  We can go home.”_

That echoed through his thoughts.  It didn’t soften his anger.  It didn’t ease that bitter tightness in his throat.  He clenched the wood of the railing even more fervently, worsening that bothersome stinging in his hands.  He fought to keep still, to keep his cool.  And he made himself look at her.  He wanted to say so much.  So much that he knew was right.  _He’s not right for you.  He’s too old.  He’s too damaged.  He won’t make you happy.  He won’t support you.  He can’t.  Not when he’s as lost as you are.  He’ll leave you.  He’s not your future.  He’s not your home.  I told you I trust you with my life.  Why can’t you trust me with your heart?_ None of those things ever made it beyond his brain, though.  They were swirling tendrils of desperation that never formed into words.  Something else formed, though, and it was out of his mouth before he could stop himself.  “You’re not this monster you think you are, Natasha.”

Her eyes went wide with shock.  What he’d said came out harder than he meant it to, but he was angry.  He was angry that she thought this of herself, that she thought loving another monster and a world full of loneliness was the only thing she deserved.  Not happiness, but _safety._   Just comfort, not joy.  Just acceptance.  No challenge to be more, to be better, to be the hero he knew (and had seen) that she could be.  That wasn’t good enough.  The thing was, _he_ knew why she wanted what she wanted, even if she didn’t.  He understood this at least.

And she couldn’t see that. 

But he wasn’t going to tell her.  He damn well should have, but he couldn’t.  He’d already said too much, revealed too much to this woman that he couldn’t have but couldn’t let go either.  She wasn’t his.  She was his teammate, his partner and his friend before, but none of that now.  He didn’t know if he could keep ignoring how he felt to preserve whatever remained of their friendship.  He didn’t want to.  Why should he have to?  Why didn’t he deserve a chance at this, at a home with someone who he loved and who loved him back?  A family, even if it was only ever the two of them and this crazy world of theirs?  Why didn’t he deserve that?  He was lonely.  He was tired of pretending.  He was tired of acting like the war didn’t haunt him, like he knew how to _live_ without it, like he was okay _when he wasn’t._   He wanted to find Bucky, to save him and bring him back.  He wanted his team to trust him with their decisions, to be candid with their secrets.  He wanted to make peace with Captain America and not continually feel like he was collapsing under the weight of it.  He wanted the life that was stolen from him by the ice, Peggy and their dance and the dreams they’d dreamed.  He wanted to rip this life he had now wide open just like he’d done to that log, tear it apart and dig down deep to find if there was anything left inside him other than emptiness.

He wanted Natasha back.  He wanted to kiss her.  He wanted her.  And he wanted to tell her that.

Most of all, he didn’t want it to be like this.

_Why not be angry?_

He looked away, because therein was the truth of it, if he’d let himself see it.  Getting angry wasn’t _who he was_.  And that wasn’t what she needed from him.  If she wanted Banner, wanted someone who burned with his rage and let it define him…  Well, he would have to accept that, just as he’d tried to before.  Telling her how he felt wasn’t what he needed to do.

And Steve Rogers was an expert at doing what he needed to do, even if he didn’t want to and even if it hurt.

She was floundering, honestly, _really_ floundering, trying to find something to say.  “I just couldn’t tell you.  I couldn’t let you see–”

But he was already cutting her off, talking over her, stopping her from hurting herself.  From hurting them both.  “It’s alright.  I guess feeling safe’s better than feeling nothing,” he said, gathering up a weak smile.  It was the best he could do.  She deserved more, the same sort of glib, overly confident nonsense he’d managed for Banner at the party.  The same acceptance.  He’d try in the future, but he couldn’t do it now.  Not right now.  He couldn’t.  He had to go.  He _needed_ to go.  He turned to go.  It was too hard to stay.

He almost didn’t see her wince.  And she almost didn’t catch him in time, but she did, reaching back to grab him.  It was the first time in weeks that she’d touched him, and the firm clench of her fingers around his hand was painful and electrifying.  Demanding.  “Steve…”  Her voice cracked.  She was struggling even more now, and when she finally looked at him, he saw the wet glimmer of tears in her eyes.  “What did she show you?”

A dance that never was.  A love he could never have.  _“The war’s over, Steve.  We can go home.”_

A home that wasn’t here.

He swallowed down his breaking heart.  “That I waited too long.”

A tear might have tracked its way down her cheek.  Maybe.  He couldn’t be sure.  But he was sure that it hurt – it hurt _so much_ – when she squeezed his hand, driving the splinters in deeper and deeper, before she let him go.

**THE END**

**Author's Note:**

> The sequel to this story can be found here: ["Walls"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4125000).


End file.
